


To Bless the Radiant Dark

by Kylenne



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:38:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3189263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylenne/pseuds/Kylenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Crestwood's wounds run much deeper than a single Rift, and it will take more than an Inquisitor's mark to heal them. While Khedira Lavellan, Seeress of Rivain, has the power to heal them both, she also has wounds of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Bless the Radiant Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Khedira does not follow the canonical background for Inquisitor Lavellan. She is a Rivaini City Elf.

Walking through the deserted streets of Old Crestwood was like walking across a gaping, festering wound. It was not simply that the Veil was thin there. Khedira had been in many such places, even before the present chaos erupted. They still existed in Rivain, centuries after the last Exalted March, even after all the efforts by sayyadinas to heal the land. Some wounds never healed, not entirely, even with care.

The dam had been breached as the mayor asked, and with it the Rift sealed by Khedira’s marked hand, but it did nothing to soften the sense of unease that hung over the ruins like a malaise. With every step, she could almost hear the bones of its people cracking beneath her feet, could hear the lamentations of children. Desperate souls wandered those streets fruitlessly as though ten years were only but a fleeting moment, lost in futile searching for answers that would never come, trapped in stasis, forgotten in their pain and suffering.

Khedira knew what she had to do, what Spirit had led her there to do, beyond mere sealing of a tear in the fabric of reality. She exchanged a long look with Solas, and he nodded to her with the gravest solemnity. For not the first time—or the last—Khedira grasped his hands in simple gratitude, for his way of knowing things without her needing to say a word. If there was a single  _basra_  in the world who understood what she had to do, it was him. He wasn’t Rivaini, but he understood what was needed there, as much as she did.

For what was needed in Old Crestwood was not merely an Inquisitor bearing an anchor to slay demons and seal a rift, but a sayyadina bearing a heart to ease the suffering of the dead. Khedira would be that person, because only she could.

So it was there, near the shore of the lake, that Khedira brought her small party to a halt with a silent gesture, raising her hand.

"What is it, Snake Eyes?" Varric asked, nervously looking over his shoulder at Bianca, almost as though he needed the reassurance seeing his prized crossbow there would bring.

"There’s something I need to do here," Khedira explained. "It might take a minute, but it’s important."

Blackwall stared at her in confusion. “It’ll be nightfall soon, we should be getting back up the hill to town, and the inn. You saw what this place was like when the sun went down,” he said. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather not repeat last night.”

"That’s why we’re stopping, my friend," Solas replied. "These souls are restless, trapped in the material world and unable to go to their rest in the Fade. Khedira can free them with her seer’s arts."

"I  _have to_  free them,” Khedira corrected him. She looked at Varric and Blackwall, two deeply prosaic men exchanging nervous and incredulous glances with each other, and felt sorry for them then, Varric most of all given his own history with cursed locales. “Look, I understand this place is bad news, more than you could possibly know. But these people were murdered—men, women, children, the infirm. People who had nowhere else to go and needed sanctuary and found nothing here but cruelty and death.” She felt her cheeks grow warm, her blood hot as anger rose up through her again; righteous though it was, she swallowed it back down again. “They were murdered, and forgotten, and I’ve got to help them. I’m the only one who can, and this is why I became a sayyadina in the first place.”

Blackwall nodded; he understood injustice, even if he didn’t understand spirits or a sayyadina’s calling. “Alright, my lady. You’ll get no arguments from me. You just tell me what we need to do,” he said.

"Stay back, love," Khedira said. "And pray for the lost."

She handed her staff to Solas and unlaced her boots, slipping out of them and placing them beside his pack, then walked some feet away to sit upon the grass and contemplate what she would do. Khedira still didn’t know exactly how Andrastians honored their dead, beyond burning them on pyres; Haven, tragically, left her with no way of knowing that, as none could be retrieved from the snow-buried ruins. She wasn’t entirely certain her so-called heathen rites would be appreciated by  _basrani_  holy women, even if one from the town proper had charged her with retrieving any evidence of physical remains. But if Khedira learned anything from her travels outside Rivain as a wandering itinerant, it was that some things transcended the doctrines of mortals, and that spirits cared very little for those lofty theological distinctions and arguments. She would do what she had to in order to give them the aid they required, what she was trained to do. She could do nothing more, or less.

Khedira shut her eyes and took slow, deep breaths to let her mind drift deep within herself, to the stillest place, blossoming as a flower into a deep meditative state. Her body tingled with energy, mana awakening in her veins as surely as blood, and she opened her heart to these lost souls, Crestwood’s forgotten dead, and it was as though a second dam had broken, within her and without. It was overwhelming, the sense of confusion and betrayal that washed over her in a flood as sudden as the one that had taken them all. She listened in stillness, calm in the center of the storm, and heard their cries of suffering, young and old. Some had forever been trapped in a single moment of sheer terror, their screams echoing through her mind as the salty water of the lake gushed through the cavernous labyrinth beneath the ground and they were overcome by the sheer force of the torrent. Some had regressed to a time even before the moment of death, and believed themselves still chased by darkspawn. Many did not realize they were even dead at all—they pounded again and again at the protective wards in her mind as frightened children pounding on a door, crying for their mother to save them.

It was nearly too much for Khedira to bear, but this was what she was called to do; to be their intercessor, their guide, their protector. Their pain became her own, as she joined them in their moment out of time, and her voice rose up from her throat almost unbidden, a rich contralto singing a wordless incantation, lamentations for all and sundry. She heard them and felt them, and they were no longer alone, nor were they forgotten. She sang and sang and grieved for them, as no one had in a decade. And when she felt as though there was no more grief left to give, Khedira opened her eyes.

Softly glowing eyes filled with tears, still entranced in visions of suffering, and she rose to her feet with lamentations still upon her lips. The hour had turned and the sun sank deep and low on the horizon, painting the sky in a dazzling array of soft violet, ochre, and tones of gold. Slowly, she placed delicate feet one in front of the other, and walked straight backed in a rhythmic procession to the water’s edge, keeping to her measured pace even as the ground grew softer and turned to mud spreading between her toes, coating her golden anklets in a thick layer of muck.

Khedira did not stop when she reached the water, could not have heard her companions’ shocked gasps of amazement when she stepped upon the still waters of the lake. In that precious, sacred moment, still out of time, she drifted cloaked in the veil and the longing of the souls who followed her; her friend, her lovers, were as distant as the moon rising in the distance, beyond the twilight, beyond this wounded place. Her song was no longer wordless, no longer discordant, no longer grieving for strangers who were as dear to her then as any of her closest companions. Then it was an old Rivaini song, with words so old even the ancient sayyadinas did not know who first sang it, it had simply been passed down from elder to initiate like so much of their lore. Like a shepherdess she sang the ancient verse to a wandering flock, and those souls were drawn to her.

_Come, come my children._

_It doesn’t matter how near or how far._

_All who are lost are found._

_Take my hand, sisters and brothers and family dear._

_Follow mamae, for she knows the way._

She felt them first before she saw them, her gentle song clear and true, sending hope to pierce through the chaos. No longer confined to her preternatural senses, they swirled about her as trailing wisps of silver, even as twilight shone incandescent blue upon the waters. From near and far they were drawn to her by the soothing melody; that the words were sung in a language none of these dead Fereldans had known or even heard in life did not especially matter. It was Khedira’s heart they were drawn to, her magic and warmth, the comfort she offered. She walked singing across the water to the center of the lake, and they followed her, as she raised her arms, extending them wide in a gesture of welcome, offering solace and comfort. With a deft flick of her hands, she slid her tiny finger cymbals down the length of her fingers to place them into position, still singing, still beckoning to the souls who took up her call to follow.

And then Khedira began to dance.

She tapped out a percussive rhythm with her fingers—the quickened pulse of a heartbeat—with the same instinctive movements as her song required. These things were in her heart, her blood, her spirit. She did not have to measure out the beat nor the steps attuned to them. Lost in her own magic, Khedira lifted her extended arms slowly, her hips swaying to the rhythm of the cymbals, hands swirling graceful circles as they rose to meet above her head. Her anklets shook and added to the percussion, tinkling bells shaking when her feet glided across the water in intricate spirals, as though it were solid ground. Her long braids spun around her again and again, and as she had so many times before, Khedira felt the Veil part before her as she danced, as the souls of Crestwood’s dead gathered around her, filling her with the hope and longing they felt.

She was a glowing beacon of emerald light in the very center of the lake, a dancing siren to lure them not to further pain but only joy and rest, with voice and graceful movements in time to her magic, a living bridge through the Veil to the Dreaming and the rest they’d been so cruelly denied. They drifted to her and they entered her: one by one, the people of Old Crestwood had been loosed from their bonds by her song, freed from at last from their agony, and took Khedira’s hand as she guided them through to the Dreaming, lifting them beyond this world, beyond the sorrow and confusion they’d known for so long. And as each of them did, their names were etched upon her own soul, their lives and dreams and those they’d left behind. Lispeth the smith, Ciaran the baker, even a sister of the chantry, Tamara. On and on it went, names upon names brushing against her heart with a word of thanks, as they were finally able to find the refuge a Blight had denied them and cruelty and cowardice stole from them. 

When the final soul had crossed the Veil, when the relief and gratitude washed over her a thousand times over, Khedira’s voice fell silent and her movements stopped, with a final loud clap of her hands above her head. With her heart still pounding and her body pulsating with energy, her breaths came a bit winded, but she stilled herself, shutting her eyes once more and gently nudging her mind to focus again on her body, on the physical sensation of air filling her lungs as deeply as they would allow, then exhaling slowly. With that focus came the steady return from ritual consciousness, heightened awareness of her physical surroundings. It was a slow process, deliberately so; the closure of the Veil within her and surrounding her, the grounding of the tremendous energy raised—these were as important to a sayyadina’s rituals as the rite of summoning itself.

There was one last thing to do, once Khedira’s mind was firmly rooted again in the material world. She reached into the small pouch at her belt, and drew a gold sovereign from her coin purse; it was Fereldan currency, stamped with the likeness of King Alistair on one side, and a pair of mabari hounds on the other. 

It was not the sea upon which she stood, but it was where they found rest all the same, and she would honor that.

"Bright Lady watch your rest, my friends," Khedira said softly, kissed the coin, and tossed it into the waters. 

The way back to shore was longer than she anticipated, no longer in a trance, and her knees buckled in exertion. She collapsed into Solas’ waiting arms then, muttering some word of apology as she was overcome by emotion and exhaustion by equal measure, but he simply shook his head to dismiss it. Instead, he gently gave her to Blackwall; the burly warrior lifted her effortlessly into his strong arms without a word, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She didn’t realize just how weary she was until she no longer had to stand on her own accord. The ritual was far more taxing than she’d believed it would be, but that had always been Khedira’s fault as a seer.

“ _Ma serannas, sayyadina,_ " Solas whispered to her, and kissed her sweat-damped brow.

Khedira smiled at him, and wordlessly raised her hand to stroke his cheek, before resting against Blackwall again. Even that slight a movement seemed to tax her weary limbs, and she nestled against the human.

"You really gonna carry her all the way up that hill, Hero?" Varric asked with a light chuckle.

"I’ll carry her all the way back to fucking Skyhold if she needs me to," Blackwall replied. He smiled at her with a twinkle in his eyes that would have made her laugh if she wasn’t so exhausted. "Isn’t that right?"

"That you would, you old bear," Khedira said, and rested her nose into his neck, shutting her tired eyes.

* * *

 

Khedira awoke a short while later in the small room she shared with Solas, back at the inn in Crestwood proper. He sat on the floor beside her bed, smiling up at her, and it made her feel flush and warm.

"Good, you’ve awakened," he said. "I would have done this sooner as is customary, but I didn’t wish to disturb you."

She stared at him blankly, her mind still fogged from sleep, but she glanced down at him, and there was a small basin beside him filled with steaming water. “You…?” she mumbled, comprehension slowly dawning on her as she looked to the water, to him, to the fresh white linen in his hand and the decanter of oil in his lap.

"Only if you wish it, sayyadina," Solas said softly.

Khedira wanted to weep, her heart filled to bursting with love and gratitude, but simply nodded her assent, and sat up sliding to sit on the edge of the bed. His smile grew wider as he dipped the cloth into the basin, and took one of her muddy feet into his grasp.

She breathed a sigh of contented pleasure as the warm water dripped from the cloth onto her tired feet. It was filthy, truth be told—both of them—and it was a practical sort of kindness he offered, wiping away the grime of the lake bed, the sweat of ritual exertions and the mundane grind of the road. There wasn’t anything terribly attractive about them, to put it mildly, but he paid her that kindness nonetheless, offering not a word of complaint or teasing. Instead, Solas, wrung out the muck, and wiped the dirt from between her toes and her heels.

Beyond the practical kindness, however, was the symbolic significance of the act, which came to the fore when he was finished at last, and Khedira’s feet resembled those of an elf again rather than some misbegotten darkspawn. Solas stared up at her, his eyes shining with warmth and the utmost devotion, and bowed his head in respect.

"Will you permit me to offer my gratitude for the blessing you have offered in the hour of twilight, sayyadina?" Solas asked of her in an almost ritualistic tone, speaking formally in Rivaini—an old dialect, terribly old, and nearly forgotten. That time, tears did well up in Khedira’s eyes despite her best efforts. She bent down to kiss the top of his head.

"I will permit this, beloved," Khedira said breathlessly, nearly overcome by emotion once more, as she spoke words aloud she had not uttered in more than five years, in a small village far to the north, far from demons and mad primordial darkspawn. There had been no need of it, in her solitary travels from town to city, crossing the old imperial highways, moving on to wherever she was needed and never staying too long in one place. To wash the feet of a sayyadina after she performed a rite was never required of supplicants; her calling was not one that demanded repayment, or expected it. It was something offered in appreciation from time to time, after a particularly important ritual, but meant nothing but simple thanks.

To offer an anointing afterward was something else entirely—only a sayyadina’s lover could do such a thing, to show their love of a woman who offered her own body in the service of the sacred for her people, asking nothing in return. The anointing was an act of love, an acknowledgment that she walked a trying path and it was appreciated by those who loved her most, and shared her with such a calling.

Khedira had been alone for so long, and there’d been no one to offer such gratitude, or such affection for her to accept.

Until now.

"No one’s done this for me since I left Vatar," Khedira said softly, and bit her lip. "Beloved…"

He looked up at her, and simply smiled. “Your smile is all the thanks I require,  _vhenan_. You have a heart filled with compassion for others, whether mortal and mundane or those who dwell in the Fade, more so than anyone I’ve ever known. It’s only fitting it be paid in return, even in some small measure like this, and if I can ever do so, I would like to.”

Khedira returned his smile, rendered speechless, and stood to her feet, slipping out of her simple dressing gown, and moving it to the side. She stood towering over him, as he knelt reverently at her feet, and the scent of jasmine drifted through her senses when he removed the stopper from the bottle. Even the manner of oil was correct—jasmine was also called the sayyadina’s flower in Rivain, sacred to seers and symbolic of their path. His attention to detail alone was enough to move her, that he understood the importance of something that would seem so trivial to a  _basra_  meant a great deal to Khedira. More than words could express, but that always seemed to be the case with him. He offered her the simplest of affection and rendered her speechless like it was extravagance.

Solas poured a small amount of the sweet and fragrant oil onto his slender fingers, and gently rubbed it into her skin in slow spirals, starting with her feet. “Blessed are the feet of the sayyadina, who dances in grace and walks in beauty,” he said reverently. Gooseflesh rose up on her arms involuntarily when his warm breath tickled against her rich mahogany skin, his lips pressed softly upon each foot in turn.

He rose up onto his knees, then, hovering between her thighs, and she could not help but hitch her breath a moment at the sight of him there. His fingers swirled around the demonic eyes of the kraken inked onto her mound, anointing with love something that still represented the grotesque shame of her past. “Blessed are the loins of the sayyadina, who is filled with passions both sacred and profane,” he whispered. Khedira’s eyes shut and she let out an involuntary sigh of pleasure as his lips caressed the ink, brushing against her skin, but pulled away just as quickly. 

She took a deep breath to steady herself, and when she opened her eyes again he was standing at full height before her, and he marked the spirals between her breasts. “Blessed is the heart of the sayyadina, who opens her heart to all in need, and loves without limit or shame,” he said. He bent down to kiss her heart, and it sent pleasant tingles down her spine.

Finally, Solas stood before her, and gazed deeply into her eyes, his own a resplendent blue as they seemed to penetrate into the deepest recesses of her soul. Always curious, always searching, and always filled with mysteries of his own she wanted dearly to explore, but as filled with love and affection as they had ever been. It was then that she truly understood that this was no simple expression of respect for her culture, or her calling. Solas meant every word of this ritual, there was no denying it, regardless of his personal beliefs. And there was no denying his love for her, if there ever was. But Khedira met his gaze with one every bit as powerful, every bit as searching. His lips parted ever so slightly, his gentle expression filled with nothing less than awe; he looked more a supplicant before an altar in the Andrastian way, then.

When at last he spoke, when at last he raised his oil-slickened fingers to her full lips and made the final spiral upon, his hand was trembling, and his very heart was in his voice. “Blessed is the mouth of the sayyadina, who speaks the truth of Spirit.”

Before she could respond in acceptance of the blessings, however, he crossed the small distance between them, so close to her that she felt his breath upon her cheeks, and he added, “Blessed is Khedira Lavellan, beloved of the Dark Lady Osana, before whose beauty even gods tremble, and before whose love even they might falter.”

Solas wrapped his arms around her then, and hungrily parted her lips with his own, the taste of jasmine still upon them as his tongue plunged deeply into her mouth. Khedira’s very knees buckled in the fierceness of his kiss, and she clung to him if only to stay on her feet; her breath was nearly stolen from her lungs until he himself was forced to come up for air, his brow resting against her own.

"Solas," she said in a broken whisper, clinging tighter to him as kohl-streaked tears streamed down from her eyes, staining his simple tunic of bleached muslin. "Is that truly how you see me?"

"Always," he said fiercely, holding her tightly, and kissed her again and again, short but no less urgent than the first. "Always, my love."

"But, I—"

"You have a gentle heart,  _vhenan_ ,” Solas whispered to her, rubbing her back in slow circles. “One with room enough for all the world and the Fade itself. Do not ever doubt that, or your capacity to love. Your past is not all that defines you. The woman who once robbed and killed without mercy is the same woman who saved those who called her witch and abomination, who wept for the dead of Crestwood, and allowed their souls to rest. We are all of us creatures of shadows, some more than most. But there is also comfort to be found in the darkness, sanctuary from the harshness of the burning sun. Never doubt that you hold  _that_  within you,  _vhenan_.”

She allowed him to lead her back to the bed, then, laying down beside her, and he took her back into his arms. The only sanctuary she could think of at that very moment was what he offered her. Naked and as vulnerable as she’d ever been, Khedira wept against him for a long, long time; it felt as though with his lover’s blessings, with his kisses, he’d unshackled her own heart, and everything she’d buried for so long out of necessity poured out of her at once. Solas simply yielded to her need for emotional release, however, and did nothing to hush her, rocking back and forth with her, whispering elvhen endearments, petting her thick, dark braids.

When the storm of her weeping finally slowed, then ceased altogether, they lay together in silence, and he pulled away from her only long enough to draw the blankets up against them, to shield her against the cold.

"You know more of Rivaini ways than you let on. More than any  _basrani_  I ever met,” Khedira said, dabbing at her eyes with a single finger. “What else are you hiding in that bald head of yours?”

Solas laughed softly, a low and quiet sound as soothing as the warmth of his embrace. “Ah, but isn’t the journey of discovery always more exciting than the destination? I can’t tell you  _all_  my secrets, Khedira.”

His laughter grew only a bit louder when she flicked the point of his ear, playfully repaying him for his teasing.

"I love you," Khedira said, as she snuggled against him. "So I’ll wait a while longer to unravel them."

"Good," Solas murmured softly, and kissed her brow.


End file.
